Wednesday, September 7, 2016

A supplement for a Jewish history bike tour of Philadelphia - Sun., Sept. 11, 2016

[NOTE: Thanks in advance for any dimming of pleasure technically, in that you have to cut and paste any urls here as opposed to the expected "click" to reach their sites.]Recently, I was fortunate to be hired as the overall guide for a Jewish history bicycle tour here in Philadelphia, now just around the corner in three days. From my first preparations, I envisioned a number of visual aids which would fully supplement the ride, spanning several neighborhoods and 130 years or more of this city's awesome Jewish history.In the end, given in part the discipline of a deadline tonight, my first effort deals with one of the latter neighborhoods of the tour, a stretch of South Philadelphia's 6th Street. The core of my first offering tonight, to be expanded somewhat before Sunday, will be a quick look at ex-synagogues and the Jewish legacy within them. The main theme might, in its most simplistic sense, will be that "we are here because they are here", or, in a more qualified way, that the huge Jewish legacy of South Philadelphia still physically survives - at times - because of newer faith communities in ex-synagogues.Tomorrow, I hope to just dip into the beauty of old maps - not too old in this city's case - but still hopefully of interest and at least suggestive of the historical subject here.Additionally, I hope to begin to show the beauty of the two main segments of a Buddhist Temple at 6th and Ritner Streets, whose annex is right across Ritner Street in a former synagogue. The Temple will be a beautiful digression:).This blog is directed in part to riders on the tour on Sunday, but I encourage any history lovers to join in, and hope, that as with a town indirectly in my past - Detroit - with six Jewish history bike rides on its resume when I last checked - we will all join in to support future bike rides through Jewish Philadelphia.This blog HONORS in part the people who continue places of Jewish life, such as Bishop James Brickhouse, at the Prophetic Church of Christ, at 1826 S. 6th St., at a corner of tiny Sigel Street, where riders on Sunday will see the name of the past Jewish congregation on the outside, as in this picture (to the right of the Bishop), but where there are no plans to enter the church....

Thanks to Bishop Brickhouse in a wonderful visit on Tuesday, Aug. 30, I saw remnants of Jewish worship or its context inside the church.One of them was a once-open space between Orthodox Jewish men on the ground level and women on the second floor, which he pointed out here in his office in the form of a light wooden board....

and its bottom side is seen here above the church sanctuary, a grand space as compared to the cozy second floor, but - like several places we will ride past on Sunday - in a rowhouse, far from the large buildings Americans often associate with synagogues....

The reverend also showed me one of three white pews given to the Prophetic Church some years ago, coming from another structure on an adjacent corner of 6th and Sigel....

While plain, the pew apparently was given to Bishop Brickhouse and others by the once-colorful "South Philly" Lebanese-American politician Jimmy Tayoun, who the Bishop noted had an office in that adjacent building. The fact that we are talking "pews" suggests that Jewish worship took place in the neighboring building, where we will see an inscription that suggests a group helping neighbors, but not religious activity.Farther down 6th, the exoticism of Buddhism - at least for many Westerners - has both kept and converted what was once Beth Shmuel synagogue, seen here across a railing for the main segments of the Preah Buddha Rangsey Temple....

Once again, our tour will not go inside the ex-Beth Shmuel, one reason I wanted to see it and at least share it here if possible, and while there are concerns about the physical future of this 20th-century Jewish house of prayer, it seemed structurally sound and definitely a cultural hybrid as I entered a door on the west side of the ex-sanctuary....

Once inside, courtesy of the Preah Buddha Temple's sexton - Romeo Lopaz, seen here with a fellow high school-age friend - Mimi Berry....

you can see the richness of newer Buddhist aesthetics, if relatively ancient in their reverence for the Buddha, including a view of the Buddha's passing in the main mural here....

and, as of Sunday, Sept. 4, a Jewish version of the Zodiac on the ceiling; while faded and in unclear light here, it was still somewhat preserved, except for an erased symbol at the east end, just outside the top of this photo....

For tonight, I will leave the reader with three images from that zodiac, each perhaps easily translatable....

and a Hebrew sign above a basement door where my success rate in the "translate", partly as a student of Yiddish in my younger days, was maybe 15%....

[Sept 10 - I have since learned that the above can be translated as "prayers daily, evening and morning, sabbath and holidays, ashkenazic (eastern european) tradition".]Please look back at this blog by tomorrow night, for further images regarding the former Beth Shmuel, and the beautiful interiors for the two main parts of the Preah Buddha Temple. [Footnote 1]Sept. 8 evening entries....My joy at seeing both the former Beth Shmuel and the relatively spectacular main parts of the Preah Buddha Rangsey Temple was mixed with thoughts that I understand challenged Buddha himself, not to mention many more mere mortals over time.While I believe in extending the life of so many historic landmarks, these visits on Sept. 4 were partly about impermanence, and I was re-learning about it from a 16-year old, basically.At one point, for example, Romeo summarized the lower mural at the east end of the former Beth Shmuel, and its display of the famous and epiphanous scene as the Buddha realizes he will leave a life of courtly materialism upon seeing an ascetic from his lofty coach....

and the painting's kind of sobering inset of aging, illness and death in our lives.Upstairs, where Orthodox women had once sat, Romeo showed me one of two walls of ashes of deceased Temple members, with the one below on the south wall, or just inside from Ritner Street....

In terms of the Beth Shmuel building, Romeo and a monk I briefly met later noted that the Temple is not sure about plans for the building, and, at a visit to the two main sections of the Temple - just south of Ritner Street, I discovered that the Temple's general plans include a new temple in suburban Voorhees, New Jersey, with my not asking if this would replace the 6th & Ritner activities or not.But again, life is moving on, as Jews moved away from South Philadelphia, and there is impermanence in this location, or at least in having just one Temple location.AND, just as various Philadelphia-area neighborhoods - Oxford Circle, Cheltenham and so on - must have been a golden vision for Jews as they left working-class South Philadelphia for years after World War II, the image I saw of the Voorhees Temple looks paradisiacally green....

As with many such illustrations this one at first seemed like - "boy, this is gonna be astounding (in this computer graphic)!" [aka too good to be true], but if Romeo's point about context is correct - that there will be a nature preserve right next to the Temple, then maybe this South Jersey idyll will look positively idyllic!Romeo, seen in last night's entries, dropped out of school last year to study Buddhism in Taiwan, and he said he will become a monk next month. While I have not received confirmation of his points, they seemed serious and knowledgeable and came after he generously offered his time to me after noting that the head monk at Preah Rangsey, who I tried to reach, has very limited English fluency.One point which i DO hope is partially incorrect from Romeo came when he showed me a painting within which he pointed to a Buddhist temple perched on a distant hill, adding that the general view showed "what Cambodia used to look like"....

With thanks for continued reader-ship prior to Sunday ridership, I hope, I will return to additions and modifications here tomorrow.

Sept 10....Continuing with the beauties of a Buddhist Temple, an altar to the left of the rural Cambodian vision above depicts what Romeo referred to as the three most important points in the Buddha's life - his birth, enlightenment and passing....

and to the right of the countryside view, Romeo pulled back a curtain to reveal a very realistic sculpture of a man who passed away in 1980 and who he said was a major patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism....

All three of these last sights are at the south side of an ex-factory, oriented from north to south and larger and longer than the ex-church housing the Temple, and with both structures seen here from the east side of 6th Street....

as well as below and diagonally to the lower left of Mifflin Square - though the factory's specifics are not named, in 1931[Footnote 2]....

Returning to the smaller annex of the Temple, you could say that while Beth Shmuel's interior presents some pretty big subjects - such as the Zodiac:) - it was basically a small working-class synagogue, a little more ambitious than the Fastover Congregation's edifice [now Bishop Brickhouse's brick house (and that of all Prophetic Church attendees)].This matter of "humble houses" of worship was underscored in a sense that my expectations of seeing loads of synagogues identified in old city atlases were dashed, at least for what would have been a deep forest of S. Philly Judaism around the 1931 atlas I saw this past Tuesday at the awesome Maps collection of the Free Library main branch.While I did not scour its detailed depiction of Philadelphia east of Broad and south of Washington Avenue (the eastern half of S. Philly, Yo!! anyways....), I saw ONE synagogue noted within its property outlines, appropriately on Porter Street - which might be called the center of Jewish gravity in 20th-century S. Phila; this congregation was known as Talmud Torah, and can be seen at the upper left below. Its building is almost certainly that of the later Stiffel Jewish Center, and we will glimpse it before heading east to a Jewish-inspired mural at the Taggart Elementary School, whose structure is shown at least vaguely at the upper right here....

In what would have been a fairly-crowded synagogue stretch - 6th below Pierce, the beautiful pinks and straight lines of 1931 reminded me that it would have been naive to try to write perhaps ANY synagogue names, with 6th visible as the right-most north-south street below....

That heritage of smaller places of prayer continues to the south, where we will see the current front of the Galilee Christian Hope Baptist Church, at 2113 S. 6th St., next to the small east-west street of Cantrell, and seen here in a view towards the key thoroughfare of Snyder Avenue....

The view below of the stone "nameplate" of the ex-Talmud Torah Adath Jeshurun, within the Galilee space, reveals a little bit of the wealth of Hebrew letters along the front of the Galilee structure....

Outside of and PRIOR to our S. Phila culmination....I wanted to at least give a sense of a few other attractions we will at least pass by tomorrow morning....Chestnut Street just after 23rd Street (AND the west side of City Hall if we have time to stop there)....Both at 2200 Chestnut, aka the Albert Greenfield Elementary School, and at the west side of City Hall, there are remembrances of Albert Greenfield (1887-1967) much more than just a major realtor in shaping 20th-century Philadelphia.He is seen here in an undated photo but one I would guess is from the 1960's....

18th Street northbound at Rittenhouse Square....Minutes ago, I learned that the legacy of Samuel Yellin - one of whose early-20th century ironworks we will whizz by at the Curtis Institute of Music headquarters on 18th below Locust - still is carried on, as per the website below, with the reminder that you need to cut and paste any url here....http://www.samuelyellin.com.A much more prominent Yellin work, now gracing the front of the Packard Building and its steakhouse tenant at 15th and Chestnut Streets, can be accessed 10-20% of the way down below....http://www.traditionalproductreports.com/ornamental-metalwork-morethan.htmlNorth Broad just north of Vine Street....Shortly after leaving City Hall, we will pass near a large and very utilitarian parking garage, but on the site of another massive construction along N. Broad, known as the Broadwood Hotel, where Jews made their mark at times in early big-city basketball, under the name of the "SPHA's", or South Philadelphia Hebrew Association. My readers may already know that this organization went well beyond a few young guys of one religion in one section of the city, thanks largely to Eddie Gottlieb, who helped others to keep towering in the sport, as here in a May 13, 1959, where he is a "desk" for a contract-signing by one of the great and often needless-to-name landmarks in the field [Footnote 3]....

532 Spruce St., as seen shortly after we start heading south on 6th Street through the Society Hill neighborhood....For now, I will finish a "G(reat)" trio - coincidentally or subconsciously - with Rebecca Gratz (1781-1869), who is remembered more than almost any Jewish woman (or man perhaps) in this city. At 532 Spruce, we will see the inscription for the Rebecca Gratz Club, a 20th-century refuge for working women and others, a place I think she would have approved of, as she lead pioneering efforts to help women, orphans and others, both Jewish and Gentile.Her beauty, as seen here and in other images, was legendary....

Footnotes1. As of Sept. 25, 2016, Romeo Lopaz has helpfully clarified that in three sources he has recently seen - noted just below - the ex-synagogue building used as the Preah Buddha Rangsey annex housed a synagogue known as "Adath Shalom". In the near future, I hope to confirm that that was at a separate time from its housing what I have noted as Beth Shmuel, but now I will just note the first of Romeo's sources, which is from the wonderful website "Hidden City" and has 24 photos related to both the main part of the Temple and the former synagogue....http://hiddencityphila.org/2014/04/transcendental-renovation/In another article within the treasure trove of "Hidden City Philadelphia", there is at least a partially correct statement from Sept. 2012 that "Adath Shalom now houses Preah Buddha Rangsey Temple, the city’s largest Buddhist temple". [http://hiddencityphila.org/2012/09/key-sites-of-jewish-south-philly-are-threatened/]Besides these sources, I should note the synagogue being referred to as Beth Shmuel near the bottom of p. 61 in the "Philadelphia Area Jewish Genealogical Directory" [at http://www.jgsgp.org/Documents/ResourceGuidev5C.pdf]while with three different spellings there.Additionally, I've just been reminded that it appears to have become Adath Shalom in the 1950's as noted near the bottom of p. 50 in this extensive listing, where one reads that it was "Formed in '50's from combination
of Young People's Shaare Israel,
Young People of Beth Samuel,
Young People of Bnai Moishe". [js 10/3/16]2. St. Andrew's Evangelical Lutheran Church image - plate 10 of the Atlas of the 1st and 39th Wards of the City of Philadelphia...,Philadelphia: Elvino V. Smith C.E. (Civil Engineer, I believe:)), 1931.3. Wilt Chamberlain and Eddie Gottlieb - picture on p. 192, Philadelphia Jewish Life 1940-2000, edited by Murray Friedman [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003].SourcesYellin, Samuel - biography - https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/23067.